Hohm: Tools for tracking energy consumption

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>> Sumi Das: Hello I'm Sumi Das for Smart Planet. Microsoft is going green and one of the ways they're doing this is by developing software that helps people manage their home energy use. Here to talk about the software and show us some of the features is Rob Bernard. He's the Chief Environmental Strategist from Microsoft. Rob thanks for being with us.

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Rob: Thank you.

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Sumi: So tell us about this tool. It's an online software tool. It helps people track their energy consumption. How do people use it?

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Rob: Well the way that you can use it is you can go to any web browser in any machine and literally just enter information about your home and it'll give you a prescription of ways that you can save energy and help save the environment.

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Sumi: Can you tell us specifically about the kind of information that consumers can get from this tool?

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Rob: One of the things you can do is you can enter you gas and utility information or depending on where you live it'll actually take that information automatically based on your address and it'll actually start to give you a profile that looks at how much energy is your water heater using. Do you have the right insulation in your home? Should you consider replacing your windows? All of those types of things are built into this tool.

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Sumi: So it gets that information automatically from the utility company then?

Rob: Yeah a combination of utility and also from a big data base that we've created which compares your use to other people around the world who are also using this tool.

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Sumi: The other feature that we should mention is that you can really compare how you are using energy versus say your neighbor.

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Rob: Right and not only your neighbor but so if I told you you're spending $1100 a year on energy what would that mean?

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Sumi: Right.

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Rob: Right.

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Sumi: It's an arbitrary number really for most people.

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Rob: But if you knew that for a house of your age and your size and your type of temperature area actually that's a number that's $300 higher than average you might say wait a second what can I do to save that extra $300?

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Sumi: So the other challenge is the consumer. Many analysts feel that consumers aren't gonna change their energy consumption habits and its difficult enough to get them to lower their thermostat so how are you gonna get people to use Home?

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Rob: I think there's 2 ways. The first is make it really easy to use. It's very easy to enter the information. It takes very little time so that's the first thing and the second thing is make it very specific. Right so it's 1 thing to tell you oh lower your temperature by 2 degrees. Well what does that mean? What if I actually could tell you lowering your thermostat by 2 degrees will save you $196? Right? Now that's real action and that's real money and it'll also tell me how much carbon I'll save if I'm interested in understanding how am I helping the environment.

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Sumi: And when can people start using this product?

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Rob: This product is available already. You just go to Microsoft Home which is spelled HOHM.com and enter in your information.

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Sumi: Alright Rob thanks for walking us through these features.

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Rob: My pleasure.

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Sumi: For Smart Planet I'm Sumi Das. Thanks for watching.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====